


Thought You Were Smaller

by kehinki



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, Insecurity, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-19
Updated: 2013-11-19
Packaged: 2018-01-02 01:09:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1050731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kehinki/pseuds/kehinki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky has some reservations about Steve's new body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thought You Were Smaller

**Author's Note:**

> I'm slowly but surely moving everything from tumblr and LJ onto here. This was written for the prompt: Bucky loved wee!Steve. Big!Steve intimidates him sexually, but he’s trying to get past that, since Steve’s feelings for him haven’t changed. The puppy eyes don’t make it easier.

“Bucky? Ah, hell, Bucky, c’mon.  _Stop_.”

“Stop what?” Bucky said, now that he’d lifted Steve fully off the couch, carrying him in a fireman’s hold like some sort of hero from the talkies. Steve had long since grown past the point of kicking Bucky in the shins and squirming back down, and was now hanging off his shoulder limply, with what was probably an expression of great consternation.

“You’ve got five seconds to put me back down,” Steve said, wiggling in his hold. “One.”

“You’re actually counting. You’re a fuckin’ goof.”

“Two!”

“What’re you gonna do when you get to five?” he asked, walking the two of them towards the kitchen. Steve had actually begun to squirm in earnest at that point, enough so that his ass was pressed against the side of Bucky’s face, and if that was his plan to get Bucky to let go, it was a shitty, awful plan. 

Steve reached down and wrapped his arms around Bucky’s midsection and it was all Bucky could do to choke back a laugh because  _fuck,_ it  _tickled_. He barely managed to not drop Steve right there on the kitchen floor, and was able to safely deposit him onto a chair. “I  _graciously_ decided to be the one to make dinner tonight, so sit tight and be grateful while I figure out soup.”

“You put it in a pot and add water, Bucky,” Steve said like Bucky didn’t already know that. “And you know, you could’ve just  _called_ me to dinner instead of manhandling me to the chair.”

“I think you like being manhandled,” he said as he began washing out their one pot. He glanced over to Steve, and felt oddly proud to see that Steve’d moved past the stage where’d he turn red and glare at him for a remark like that. Instead he just looked unimpressed, with his mouth pinched at one corner and his eyebrows raised.

After they’d polished off their meagre portions of watery soup and stale bread, Bucky hefted Steve up again and this time Steve didn’t complain, just gave him a shrewd sort of look before smirking. He wrapped his willowy arms around Bucky’s neck, and Bucky grabbed one of Steve’s thighs, wrapped it around his waist.

He grinned. “Like I said, you like getting carted around.”

“Sure, Buck. There’s no place I’d wanna be other than your arms.”

“That so, huh?” He tossed Steve onto the bed like he weighed nothing at all, and barked out a laugh as Steve bounced up off the mattress once before settling. It was alright because Steve laughed too, and in an instant Bucky was looming over him on all fours. Steve’s eyes were bright and happy, glinting under the lights from the streetlamps outside, and his lips were stretched in a smile so wide it almost looked painful. His face was already flushed and it was  _beautiful,_ even with all its hollows.  

He leaned down, staring down at where his thumb brushed against Steve’s bottom lip. “You got the reddest lips, Steve.”

Steve groaned, grabbing him by the back of the neck and pulling him down for a kiss, probably to stop him from making any other embarrassing comments. Which is a good thing, too. Bucky was always putting Steve down for running his big mouth but when Steve was under him, he couldn’t shut up for the life of him. Going on and on about Steve’s pretty lips, or his eyelashes, or his legs or his ass, which he could completely cup with his hands. It was a bad habit, all that talking, but he did it anyway, layering stupid endearment on top of stupid endearment—maybe because he sometimes got the feeling Steve didn’t believe him. And, admittedly, he sometimes did it because he liked that blush on him, liked that embarrassment. Liked it when Steve swatted his hip and called him a jackass.

Steve wasn’t beautiful like a dame, and he wasn’t handsome like a man, but he was still so  _pretty._  His face and body and  _everything_  defied the standard and Bucky fucking  _loved_  it.

He cradled Steve in his arms like he was something precious and delicate, making sure not to crush. He was awarded with an eye-roll from Steve who, of  _course_ , knew exactly what he was doing.

He licked at those red lips and Steve opened up. He then moved to part his legs and Steve opened up there, too, letting Bucky settle between his spread legs. “I could kiss you all day, just like this, never get outta bed for anything,” he said against Steve’s lips, which were spit-slick and red and swollen and perfect.

“Just kissing?” Steve asked with a wide-eyed look that Bucky knew was anything but innocent.

“Well if you have anythin’ else in mind, I’m all ears, pal.” 

Steve grinned up at him and stuck a hand down the front of his pants and— _well_. It seemed they were both able to shut up for a few minutes with the right sort of distraction.

—

Steve said he wasn’t going to see Bucky off like he was his  _wife,_ crying on his shoulder before he went off to the war while he stayed at home, safe and sound collecting scraps in his red wagon. “You gonna give up your lipstick for the war effort?” Bucky joked in an attempt lighten his foul mood. Steve frowned, told him to quit kidding around.

“I don’t know how you’re gonna survive out there. You can barely figure out soup.”

“You just put it in a pot and add water, Steve.”

Steve’s smile was a little wobbly, but that was okay. He gave Bucky a hug and told him he’d see him soon and reminded him—with firmness—not to win the war ‘til he got there.

Bucky gave him a salute and that was that.

—

And later—much, much, much later, Bucky was trying very hard to maintain sanity through repetition of who he was and focusing very, very hard on what he’d do once he got out of here. He’d kill them all, he thought. He’d massacre his way out, howling all the way, make it through the gates by the skin of his bleeding teeth. He’d rip open the cells—the cages—all the others were in and they’d end the war all on their own, tearing Nazis apart with their bare hands and then finally,  _finally,_ he’d sail that great, cold, black ocean and find his way back over to Steve, fall down at his feet. He’d apologize for not waiting, apologize for finishing the war without him but Steve had to understand he was better off far away from this place.

He never got to really slaughter his way out and his rescuer looked remarkably like Steve. Same eyes, same lips. 

Steve’d gotten bigger. And he killed some people on their way out; Bucky wished he could help but—well…

—

“What’d they do to you? Pumped you up full of weird chemicals—fuckin’ quacks, they don’t know what that shit’ll do in the long run.” He was tired and dizzy and more than a little drunk. They were sitting by the fire pit, just the two of them, since the others had finally seemed to get it through their skulls that Bucky wanted to have some  _words_ with this souped-up version of his best friend.

Steve was slumped over, hands in his lap—all those years of acting like he was seven-foot-something and now he was  _slumping down_  like he was trying to hide inside himself.

“Yeah, well. It’s better than the alternative.” Steve was fidgeting and Bucky focused on his hands. He used to have thin hands—dainty was the word Bucky used in his head and never said aloud. They’d been artist’s hands. Now they were big and rough—bigger than Bucky’s, even. He was taller too, and broader and just so… not Steve.

He wasn’t a total dick, though. Steve was healthier—he didn’t run out of breath even  _once_ when they fought their way out of that HYDRA base. He didn’t even break a sweat, he carried all of Bucky’s weight on him and didn’t keel over. He had the body he deserved, the perfect specimen of a man, a body that matched his heart. A masterpiece was what it was.

A masterpiece that Bucky wasn’t too keen on. Steve used to be broken up inside, with failing lungs and a failing heart but he’d been all his, he’d fit against him perfectly and no one else gave him the time of day and for all the years he spent angrily wondering at how  _anyone_ could ignore Steve, he wanted to be the centre of Steve’s world again—he wanted him  _back,_ back from everyone else who only saw Captain fucking America.

Hell, he already missed carrying Steve around, dragging him onto his lap. He missed couting the notches of his spine with his lips. 

 _I’m a selfish fucking pig._ He grabbed a stick and jostled the crackling firewood just so he had something to do and out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Steve do a quick look-around.

When Steve leaned in to press a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth, Bucky ducked his head. “Someone’ll see. There’s always someone around to see.”

Steve retreated a little too fast. “Right,” he said, averting his eyes back to the fire pit. 

He was such a fucking  _pig_.

—

He had to look  _up_ at Steve. Up and up and up and he was never going to get used to it. He entertained the idea of trying to kiss him when everyone had retreated to their own tents, but he realized he’s have to pull Steve down by his dog tags or else get up on his toes.

Steve could probably lift him up if he wanted to, and Bucky’d have to cling to him like a limpet. The thought didn’t settle right.

It wasn't ever like that, what they had, and he didn't want it to change. But it had, it'd turned topsy turvey and Steve was handsome and healthy, could get anyone he wanted on his arm. People were  _begging_ to be on his arm, and Bucky was shoved aside, relegated to glaring into his pint while perched on a lonely stool at the end of the bar. 

The only one who really saw him now was Steve, whose eyes would flick to his a little too often (he was probably offending the woman who'd seated herself next to him by doing that). Steve smiled his way looking like he desperately wanted rescuing from the crowd that surrounded him. 

Bucky swallowed the remainder of his booze before sauntering over. Six-feet-tall and nearly half as wide and he still needed rescuing. 

—

Steve tried to kiss him again after a successful raid. Bucky didn't know why he still felt the need to move away—it was reflexive, like his mind refused to accept this was really Steve. He faltered, going with the same old excuse.  

“Someone’ll—” 

“Someone’ll see. Yeah, I know.” 

Steve looked angry and  _hurt_ and he didn’t get it—he had Carter and the Commandos and his adoring fans—what the hell did he need Bucky for?

—

“You liked me better when I was weak,” Steve said one night, apropos to nothing.

Bucky’s chest tightened at that. It wasn’t true—that would be  _sick_. “Like you were ever weak.”

“I  _was_ ,” and now Steve looked angry, his eyes gleaming in the firelight. “I was so weak— _helpless_ sometimes. You always came rushin’ in like some kinda hero, you—you had to carry me home some nights. You had to feed me when I got too sick. You really  _miss_ that?”

“No!” he said hotly. “No, Steve, you got it wrong—it’s just taking a while to get used to—”

“What’s there to get used to? I’m still—I’m still—”

There must be something seriously wrong with him for feeling the way he felt if Steve—the guy who knew him better than anyone else on earth—couldn't figure out where he was coming from. But instead of saying that, he found himself saying: “Steve, you’re getting kind of loud.”

Steve’s eyes shuttered and he turned his gaze away, glaring at the fire. “Right, of course. Someone’ll hear.”

Bucky felt trapped. Panicked and trapped, like something was about to slip out of his reach forever, like he wouldn’t be able to hold onto something very, very important. Steve’s eyes were red-rimmed and hard and angry in the flickering light, his lips pulled down into a frown, the kind of frown he’d get when he came home with bleeding knuckles and a shit-eating grin. He was still slumped over. Making himself small again, like he didn’t want to be obtrusive, though it was in his nature to be obtrusive. Who the hell encountered Steve Rogers and didn’t want him to intrude on wherever the hell he wanted in their lives.

“I’m a dick,” Bucky said.

“Yeah,” Steve replied, not really looking at him.

It was just that spooning behind Steve would be harder now, he couldn’t lift him onto the counter, he couldn’t carry him to bed. The only thing he could still do was take punches for him. “It’s just—weird, y’know? The role reversal? I’ve always been the one lookin’ after your dumb ass—”

“Oh,  _hell,_ ” Steve snapped, finally looking at him again. He looked  _miserable,_ his eyes bright and his face scrunched. _“_ We’ve been looking out for  _each other_  since the day we met—don’t delude yourself, you  _jackass_. Where’d you be without me? You can’t even figure out—”

Bucky kissed him to get him to stop talking because he  _knew_ he was right, they both knew he was right. He didn't even mean what he was saying he was just—trying to get his head on straight, that was all. They parted and he made sure to carefully study Steve's face, its hollows and colours. Steve's mouth was still a little open, wet and pink, and his eyes were dark and heavy and sad. “You got the reddest lips, Steve,” he said. Same eyes, same lips—same a lot of things, actually.

Steve rested his forehead against Bucky’s. He could do that now, he had the height. “I know. You keep telling me.”

“Your daily reminder. Just—I love you, you know? But I’m an ass. So… I don’t know, give me a little while. To adjust.” Steve was still beautiful—and handsome. Beautiful and handsome and  _pretty._ And Bucky could still probably maneuver him how he wanted him—if he asked nicely.

Steve pressed those distracting lips of his against his forehead— _he could do that now, too, didn’t need to stand on something._ “Alright. We’ve got plenty of time. But when you finally figure your shit out, I’d really,  _really_ like to suck you off.”

Bucky nearly fell into the fire pit and Steve had to pull him up by his lapels. “You know what, pal, I think I just had an epiphany,” he said with a startled laugh.

“I’m glad,” Steve told him, all faux-seriousness, and kissed him again. Someone was  _definitely_ going to see.  


End file.
